Facebook planning to change its name, announcement likely in a week: Report

Facebook is planning to rebrand itself with a new name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a report by the Verge, which has cited a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about the name change at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28, but it could be unveiled sooner.

According to the report, the name change is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail.

The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more.

Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones.

Zuckerberg, who co-founded the social network in 2004, has said that the key to Facebook’s future lies with the metaverse concept —the idea that users will live, work and exercise inside a virtual universe. The company’s Oculus virtual reality headsets and service are an instrumental part of realizing that vision.

“In the coming years, I expect people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social media company to seeing us as a metaverse company," Zuckerberg said in July. “In many ways the metaverse is the ultimate expression of social technology.

Facebook also said in July it was creating a product team to work on the metaverse which would be part of its augmented reality and virtual reality group. "This investment (in new jobs) is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of Facebook Reality Labs, its augmented reality and virtual reality group.”

The term “metaverse” was famously coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, where it referred to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people.

Lots of other science fiction media includes metaverse-like systems (some of them predating Snow Crash). But Stephenson’s book remains one of the most common reference points for metaverse enthusiasts, along with Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One.

There’s no universally accepted definition of a real “metaverse,” except maybe that it’s a fancier successor to the internet. Different tech giants have different interpretation to metaverse.

Facebook describes the ‘metaverse’ as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”